


h/hr: futile devices

by afrenchexit



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-16
Updated: 2013-07-16
Packaged: 2017-12-20 10:07:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/885999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afrenchexit/pseuds/afrenchexit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hermione has never been capable of forgetting him when he's like this, angry and lost, caught somewhere between himself and the idea of himself, between the real Harry and the Harry other men have constructed and explicated to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	h/hr: futile devices

Even ten feet away and at an angle, she can read him. Easier than anyone ever could. He's sitting in front of the cottage, knees pulled up to his chest, digging at the wet sand with a twig absent-mindedly. As she approaches him she can already see how he is clenching and unclenching his jaw, where all that unarticulated rage lives, has always lived. She crouches before him cautiously, but he doesn't look up to meet her eyes. They sit like this for a long time, somehow interacting without words, like they always have. She waits for him to say it aloud, to repeat his thoughts as though she doesn't already know them.

Usually she would simply touch his forearm or leg to remind him she's there, or share her latest stratagem (the particulars always distracted him from the pathos); but somehow this morning that impulse to comfort Harry is absent. Maybe it's the lack of sleep, or the headache that's settled in her temples and behind her eyes, or the stinging, raw burn from the scar on the inside of her arm (she knows the healing spells have done their work and so this cutting fire is all in her mind; she reminds herself of this logic frequently, though it does nothing to alleviate the pain). Or maybe it's the trembling that starts in her solar plexus and spreads out to her limbs, a winter freeze that won't subside no matter how many hours she sits pretending to read in the sun's warmth.

He looks up at her, finally, and then averts his eyes back to the ground. "I keep rethinking it," he says. "I don't know how else...we could've saved him." She doesn't respond, leaves the silence for him to build on, to think and find his words. "There's this... weight," he begins, struggling.

"I've no clue how that feels," she bites back, momentarily surprised at her own bitterness.

She is tired. She should leave him be, she knows, but Hermione has never been capable of forgetting him when he's like this, angry and lost, caught somewhere between himself and the idea of himself, between the real Harry and the Harry other men have constructed and explicated to him.

She sits back and looks out at the sea for a long while. It reminds her of her parents, inexplicably - her parents who do not know her at all. She nearly doubles over with a shudder and then she's crying, the sobs shaking through her whole body. His arms are around her at once, but she can't hold him right now, can find only anger when she searches for some affection to give back to him. Just anger, and the stinging cut on her arm she knows logically, pragmatically, is not real.

In the silence she allows the spell to pass, waits for her breathing to slow, and finally rests her head in the crook of his shoulder. She is shivering - the sun can't warm them somehow - and he pulls her closer, tries to rub the warmth back into her arms. They are both reminded of the near-silent woods they inhabited together for weeks; the absurdity of the peace that nested there, all that absence and quiet in the middle of the fighting and chaos.

“This war-” she stops and sighs. Language is not supposed to be difficult for her, that is Harry’s challenge, but she doesn’t _want_ to have to articulate this. Not to him. “This war is…is over my blood, Harry. My body. I’m the mudblood. How can you always-" she shakes her head, her voice catches, "-always forget that?”

Her question, her voice, hits him like a spell to the chest, or like a dream where you miss a step and can't catch yourself from falling. He can't find the right response. Instead he grasps her wrist, gently, just below her imagined scar, in apology.


End file.
